Call them "Pessah narcs" or "hametz finks" - these self-appointed informers will wander the cities of Israel this holiday searching for wayward restaurateurs, bakers and other food purveyors illegally displaying leavened bread during the seven days of Pessah.

Armed witha cellphonecamera and an eye - and a nose - for fresh-baked bread, each informant will relay concrete evidence of the illicit culinary activity to a group of legal activists. Police, municipal officials and the Interior Ministry will be notified of the transgression.

…Not all religious leaders agree with the forum's tactics. Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, chairman of Tzohar - a group of modern Orthodox rabbis - said that coercion was counterproductive.

"I personally believe that secular Israelis should want to have a hametz-freepublic domain, because otherwise, in what way is this state Jewish?" said Feuerstein.

"But I also believe that any attempts to force people via legislation will only turn them off. Coercion does not bring anyone closer to Judaism."

Were the Rabbinatea bastion of probity and spirituality, a relentless campaigner for Jewish unity andAhavat Yisrael,we might be inclined to forgive its occasional dalliance with religious coercion.

But it is none of these things. So its declaration that it will "out" stores selling leavened products on Pessah is just the latest instance of this country's established church getting its Judaism precisely wrong.

The Rabbinate, however - with little success - has been pressuring supermarket chains (most of whom anyway do not sell hametz) to fiddle with their checkoutbar code readers so hametz items can't be processed.

How superfluous - as if supermarkets were inundated with tactless customers surreptitiously grabbing from inaccessible shelves and trying to sneak their purchases past the checkout clerks.

The so-called "Chametz Law" has not been forcibly implemented anywhere, and anyone who wants to distribute leaven during this year's Passover has been able to do so, said attorney Gilad Barnea yesterday.

Barnea is representing four Jerusalem businesses charged two years ago, the first such cases since the law was enacted in 1986.

The IDF held a massive Seder for 400 "lone soldiers" who have no parents in Israel. Lone soldiers are defined as those who immigrated to Israel without their parents or whose parents have emigrated from Israel, as well as orphans and soldiers who are not in touch with their families for other reasons.

Idan Rossman, 29 from Tel Aviv, plans to spend this Seder with five friends at the Be'erotaim caravanserai near the Azoz village in the Negev.

Idan and a diverse bunch of five friends - one former kibbutznik, three formerly religious girls hailing from the ideological settlement of Kedumim and two religious boys from Jerusalem - will pass what is a traditionally strictly familial night by the campfire, reading the Haggadah, singing and playing their guitars.

The Israel Medical Association vowed yesterday to continue pushing for the appointment of a full-time health minister following the announcement that MK Yaakov Litzman would be named deputy health minister.

The IMA has petitioned the High Court of Justice over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's failure to name a health minister, and protests will begin after the Pesach holiday.

Litzman, who was born in Germany in 1948 and taken by his parents at the age of two to New York, grew up in Brooklyn's mostly haredi Boro Park neighborhood.

He immigrated to Israel with his wife, a clerk at a haredi newspaper, with whom he has five adult children. They currently live in Jerusalem's Ezrat Torah neighborhood.

…Not only did he quote biblical sources several times during the short, modest ceremony at a synagogue event hall across the street from the ministry, officials also added Torah references and "God willing" to their speeches.

At least one staffer dug into her closet for a modest dress instead of her usual jeans, and wondered whether to shake his hand (she didn't).

Even before he formally takes over the Health Ministry as deputy minister, United Torah Judaism MK Ya'acov Litzman says he wants to beef uphospital staffingonweekends.

Shaare Zedek Medical Centerdirector-general Prof. Jonathan Halevynoted that there were fewer patients in the hospital onweekendspartly because some elective patients preferred to be at home on Shabbat and holidays.

Jewish doctorsare permitted by Halacha to work on Shabbat and festivals, but then there are also a larger number of non-Jews on duty.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University’s department of Arabic.

The anxiety over the prospect of rabbis replacing education officers stems from the primal fear gnawing at some secular camps in the face of Judaism and its role within Israeli society and the State.

… Get over it. The problem is not the IDF Rabbinate, but rather, those who use it and its success as a means to slam the moral and dedicated national-religious community, which constitutes a mirror for those who are not like it.

…Religion has never been separate from the state here; hand in hand they oversee our way of life.

Orthodox society and its leadership should not be blamed for this.

The Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox have the right to do everything they can to impose their faith on the secular majority.

It's the secular who are to blame. Just as it's not yeshiva students' fault that they are not drafted, but rather the fault of the secular majority that allows this, so it is with the other aspects of our lives.

We, the secular people, are to blame for all this. We're the ones who give in.

A program has been developed to help religious and haredi students prepare for the psychometricexamination - the standardized entrance exam for the country's universities and academic colleges - by removing content they might deem immodest or offensive.

Theinitiativecomes from the Institute for the kosher l'MehadrinPsychometricExam, established by Rabbi Chaim Fogel, a Jerusalem-based rabbi involved in a number of educational initiatives and institutions.

Theinitiativewas instituted not only to encourage the integration of the religious and haredi community into the Israeli workforce, Fogel said, but to be referenced by other religious and haredieducational institutions, in order to raise the educational level in those institutions.

Members of Kiryat Yovel’s chareidi community are unwilling to come to terms with last week’s courtruling releasedby the Jerusalem Local Court siding with secular residents who object to using a home for a Shabbos minyan.

Residents are now taking their case to the Jerusalem District Court, seeking to have the earlier ruling overturned.

Chareidi residents feel the court’s ruling was not in line with Freedom of Religion, insisting the use of a vacant home for Shabbos tefillos is not a violation of zoning ordinances as the court states.

Pashkavils (posters) accusing businessman Nochi Dankner of being "the greatest Shabbat desecrator of all" have been distributed in Bnei Brak and in Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox neighborhood on Passover eve.

Dankner is the owner of the Yesh supermarket chain which caters to the haredi market.

According to the posters, many businesses owned by Dankner's IDB group work on Shabbat and also facilitate Shabbat desecration by others.

These businesses include cellular service provider Cellcom, which operates its customer service on Saturdays, and Israir airline and Natur tour operator, which organize trips on weekends.

A non-profit organization called Brit Yosef-Yitzhak, which has provided more than 35,000 pro-bono circumcisions since it was founded 20 years ago, is footing the bill for the entire procedure.

"It is a real self-sacrifice to undergo a brit late in life," Amit said.

"We try to do everything to make it as easy as possible. We arrange everything from transportation to and from the hospital, medical costs, the mohel, the festive feast after the brit, and we even change the bandages the day after."

A circumcision costs an average of $1,000, he said.

"Sometimes we have to send a mohel to faraway places like Taiwan, South Korea, India, Japan or even Yemen and the cost rises to $7,000 or $8,000 per circumcision."

While families throughout the world were in a last-minute rush to clean their homes for the Passover holiday -- some even renovating and buying new furniture -- the Israel Antiquities Authority was also busy, caring for one of Judaism's most sacred sites, the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The Interior Ministry's Regional Committee for Planning and Construction in the Jerusalem District recently approved an addition measuring 950 square meters (10,225 square feet) to a building on the northern part of the Western Wall plaza.

According to an Interior Ministry official, "The plan, which was prepared by architect Ada Karmi, includes the addition of a two-story wing at the front of Strauss House and another, fourth floor on top.

"This area will be populated by a police station, the Chain of Generations Center, operational grounds and services for visitors and workers of the Western Wall plaza."

Our goal was to make a place for those "secular" Jews to study Judaism and get in touch with their Jewish identitywithout being forced to conform to the rigid confines of "Religiousness" in Israel today -- in short, a place for secular Jews to find religion, or a "secular yeshiva."

In English, it might be better to call it a "Pluralistic Yeshiva," in which students study Torah, Halacha, Aggada, and Jewish philosophers from Rambam to Buber, and do so in an open format in which different opinions are welcomed and open discussion is encouraged.

Far from cutting ourselves off from religion, we are merely trying to break the monopoly that currently exists on it here in Israel, and bring it to those who may be skeptical about its relevance or even cynical about its impact on society.

Jacky Levy - and his actor cohorts from the Incubator troupe - fills a void in our society so snugly, yet so oxymoronically, that the success of his weekly Kalabat Shabbat sessions (in Hebrew) at Beit Avi Chai, in retrospect, seems guaranteed.

Levy is ardently Jewish, despite having issues with some of the pillars of Orthodoxy.

…On a personal note, Levy recently achieved closure on an important chapter in his formative years.

"I was always a rebel at yeshiva," herecalls, "and, before I left, I told my rabbi that he had done everything in his power to dissuade me from remaining observant but that I would stay religious nonetheless..."

At one of Jerusalem's most well-known spots for holding familycelebrations, there's not a lot ofsimhain the air.

Heichal Shlomo, which owns the events hall in the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem, released a statement on March 29 warning that it is not responsible for any events scheduled past May 20, as the operator ofthe hall, Yisrael Erlinger, has been asked to leave and has been requested not to hold any events inthe hallpast that date.

According to Gura Berger, press representative for Heichal Shlomo, Heichal Shlomo brought an arbitration suit against Erlinger at the rabbinic court in Kiryat Ono on February 19, claiming that Erlinger had violated the terms of his contract on three counts.

Thousands of Christian clergymen, worshipers and pilgrims thronged the alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City, chanting hymns and bearing crosses as they markedGood Friday by retracing Jesus's final footsteps.

Despite the widespread tourism decline across the world due to the financial crisis, hotel occupancy in Israel was expected to reach 75 per cent over the Pessah period - mostly thanks to Christian pilgrims here for Easter.

In 2008, Christian tourists comprised two-thirds of the three million visitors to Israel, and this year, a new record is expected as Pessah, which began on Wednesday evening, overlaps with Easter, which is celebrated today.

About 10,000 Christian pilgrims are expected to come to Israel in May during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, significantly fewer than the "over 40,000" that Tourism Ministry officials spoke about less than a month ago.

The 2000 visit by John Paul II brought more than 47,000 pilgrims to Israel. Genesis Tours, which has an exclusive arrangement to fly pilgrims in and put them up, said there may be a few thousand additional pilgrims making arrangements with other travel agencies.

Pope Benedict XVI, who will be arriving inIsraelfor a short visit in a month-and-a-half, will also get to take a 40-minute trip through the country's skies, without even having to leave the holy city of Jerusalem.

The pope will be visiting Jerusalem's Time Elevator site, and get to inaugurate its new attraction – the Aerial Odyssey.